Our Tale, ahem, I Mean Our Wing
by Strawhat Dragon
Summary: After the Everglades, Max and the Flock do another break in and they find data on another successful experiment like them. Though, it seems this file had been buried more so than other files. It says that this girl was the first successful experiment.
1. Prologue: Remember us?

_Wow, my first story shall be for one of the most awesome books ever made! And I just discovered this section existed mere seconds ago…_

_Ah, well, took a bit of thinking to figure out what I wanted to write, but I guess I'll just go with the flow. Ha, I sound like Max's voice: "Go with the flow." _

_I might make up a character later, we'll see. Or you'll see. Um… lets get on with this, shall we? _

**_Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride or any of the flock, or Erasers. Those all belong to (insert author's name here) and not me_. **

**Prologue**

Max's POV:

Soaring through the clouds, feeling the wind rush past you, having the sun warm you wings. It's really awesome, you know?

You probably don't know, unless you're an avian-hybird like I am. You're looking at me like I belong in the Funny Farm, aren't you? Okay, let me explain.

There are six of us. There's me, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman, and Angel. Whoops, forgot Total, he's our talking mutant dog. That makes seven of us. All of us, except Total, are avian-hybirds, though we prefer Avian-American.

Lets see, info on each of us.

Fang, he's the true meaning of tall, dark, and silent. We're lucky if we can get ten words out of him in a day. I mean, he wears black, black, and, I'm forgetting something…Oh, right, black. Even his _wings_ are black.

Iggy? He's tall, bomb expert, excellent cook, wonderful with fire. Oh, he's blind too. The white coats tried to improve his night vision. He can see really, _really_ good in the dark now. Did you catch my sarcasm?

Nudge. Non-stop talking, I'll say that. She's developed a talent with computers too Watch out top-secret computer files! Nudge is coming to get you! That is, as soon as she finishes her conversation on how the sky is so blue.

Gasman, he's got the name for a reason folks. Ever since he was a baby, something funky has been wrong with the boy's system. If he lets one rip, then you better brace yourself. Also defend, he'll mimic you're voice and have it blamed on you.

Ah, my Angel. Well, she's been creeping us out lately with her whole mind reading thing and controlling people with her mind. We also think she's turning into a fish, she breathing under water and talking to seafood.

Hmm, what about Total? He's a small dog, he talks, we found him in a laboratory, he doesn't fly like us though. No, that'd make it way too easy. But he can jump, oh, about thirty feet into the air?

And then there's me. Miss Maximum Ride. Just call me Max though. Let's see, I can fly, I'm the leader of the group, thirteen-foot wingspan. The normal. Um… I can also fly somewhere around two hundred miles per hour if that interests you.

Put all of us together, and you get what we call the Flock.

See how normal we are? We have _wings_, no biggie.

We _fly_, well, can't you?

And our dog _talks_, hmm, actually, that seems pretty weird to me...

Go ahead and click out of this window like it snarled at you or something. I don't know, it might. Whenever we update Fang's Blog it snarls at us sometimes.

But, keep reading if you're new to this and don't have the info or if you just like hearing me talk. Either way, it might save your life.

Where to start, where to start? Seems like it's been three eternities since this all started.

Okay, when we were newborns; the white coats took us away from our parents. Except for Gazzy and Angel, their parents gave them away. Sad, isn't it?

On with the topic, they took us to a place we call the School. No, not the place with the little smiling teachers that you humans go to every week. This place is evil. I mean, evil with a capital E. They experiment on kids, turning us into mutant freaks. Some come out pretty decent, some come out freakishly disgusting and repulsive. Death is a result for many of the experiments there, but we were one of the few successful experiments.

And we escaped. Why? Cause we didn't feel like being the lab rats and jumping through hoops over and over just to entertain them. But now they want us back. So now, we can't go anywhere without being swamped by Erasers.

Oh, forgot to mention them, didn't I? Erasers are another successful experiment. They're lupine-hybirds, and recently, lupine-avian-hybirds. Not a happy mix, I know. But there is a flaw in these beasts. They're life span is shortened dramatically. They usually live up to six years, but they've been improving them so that might change.

Bad news for us.

And not too long ago, or was it long ago? Ah, never mind, some time ago, the actually captured Angel. _My Angel. _It felt like someone had sawed off my left wing. On our way to rescue her, I got injured and these really nice humans took care of me. Ella and Dr. Martinez. While I was there, the showed me how to make cookies from scratch. Five words.

Best cookies in the world.

I'm now on my mission to find the best cookie now. If you have any tips on where to find some pretty good ones, give me a call, would ya? I'll fly over and check them out.

Back on topic, after we rescued Angel, we took a trip to the Big Apple. And that's where we found Total. Worst weeks of my life too, those headaches about split my skull in half.

But, we got Total and we found some info on us. And our parents. Well, except for me, we got nothing on me.

And get this, we actually found Iggy's parents. It was so exciting, yet it ripped all of us into pieces with sadness. Then it all fell apart when his parents decided to make him a public freak show. During the time we were staying with a woman named Anne, lets not talk about her much since she's the School's Top Dog, shall we?

And then Angel dropped a bomb on us about how this big company called Itex was supposed to blow up the world and then I finally understood my whole "Save the world" mission.

So yeah, we dropped in, kicked butt, learned some more stuff, and flew away. Then we went to Florida, dropped into Disney World, and here we are.

So, yeah. We're on the run. Always on the run. I swear, if I had one decent day with no Erasers or anything else happening, I'd probably go nuts. If I haven't already. Voice and me make a pretty good loony team.

Have a voice in my head, I forgot that too. Sorry, can't really concentrate right now, being in hand-to-hand combat with two Erasers while in mid-air is kind of hard, you know?

I'll give more details later, after I empty this can of whup-ass on these Erasers.

To be continued… 

_There you go. That's mah prologue. Now, you see that little review button over there? Every time you click it and leave a review, Ari will have a reason to stop trying to kill Max and the Flock. That and I'll update again._

_TTFN_


	2. One Like Us?

_Oh dear, oh dear. I was expecting to update this a few days ago, but I've been having some down right painful headaches, and I've been getting sick. School isn't the nicest thing to me either. And I got my _Psychonauts_ and _Dirge of Cerberus_ game not too long ago… So you must excuse my blabbing. And I also noticed that for some reason I can't put up a whole summary, so I'll stick it here_:

_After the Everglades, Max and the Flock do another break in and they find data on another successful experiment like them. Though, it seems this file had been buried more so than other files. It says that this girl was the first successful experiment. But what is she? Who is she? And more importantly, WHERE is she? Max and the Flock don't know, but they did see avian in their research, so maybe this girl is like them…_

_Right, right. There's the full summary. Like it? Plot might change later on, but, well, you know. As I said before, go with the flow. Because sometimes, the flow can lead to incredibly enjoyable plots, or mind bursting Writer's Blocks. Lets cross our fingers and hope for the first one, shall we?_

_Ahem, well, I do hope you enjoyed the prologue, because now is Chapter 1._

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Max, the Flock, Erasers, or anything else. Except for anything I made up, then those be mine.**_

One Like Us?

Max's POV 

_Max, take a deep breath._

Listening to my annoying, yet sometimes very helpful Voice, remembering what happened the last time Voice told me to do this, I took the deepest breath I could.

And had it knocked right out of me.

An Eraser had dropped from the sky and did a mid air flip, catching me in the chest and knocking me back a bit. My breath left my lungs in a loud whoosh, but I quickly sucked in more air and rocketed towards the Eraser. God I hate these new and improved Flying Erasers, they were so, so…agile. But they were still a bunch of flying cows compared to us.

And of course, being the big, stupid, hairy flying cow that he is, he brought his arms up in front of his body thinking I was going to ram him. Wrongo buddy, strike one.

I spread my great white wings and quickly stopped. Bringing my hands up, I clapped them over the Eraser's furry ears, making him howl in pain as he dropped, his clawed hands went up to his ears.

_Behind you._

I dropped about ten feet to see another hairy Eraser grasp the air where I just was. He paused when I disappeared, hovering in mid-air above me. He looked around in confusion as he tried to figure out where I had disappeared to as he did a 360 sweep. I couldn't help but giggle at his confused wolfy face.

Whoops.

His ears swiveled as they locked on to the sound of my laugh. He looked down at me, looking at me laugh. I swear, if it was possible, I think his fur turned red from anger and embarrassment he dived at me, that mouth full of gnashing teeth aimed right at my neck. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a black blur. Wham! Strike two.

I looked over to Fang to see him twisting the Eraser's wing painfully to the side. I heard a terribly crack and the Eraser clawed at his wing screeching as he plummeted towards the earth. Ouch. That had to hurt.

I looked over at Fang and his eyes seemed to say "You okay?" I nodded a quick yes and did a 360 turn. Lets see, Nudge, Fang, Angel and Total, Gazzy, Nudge… Wait, where's Iggy?

_Look up._

I looked up and quickly worked my wings to get me altitude. Why you ask? Because Iggy was above me. And he wasn't alone. He had, oh, about _five _Eraser to keep him company.

I could hear Fang's wing working in time with mine as he noticed what I was flying to. Gazzy followed up along with us, but I shot Nudge and angel a look that said "Don't follow, we got it."

I mean, come on. Four bird kids against five bloodthirsty wolf men? We've been through worse.

Fang, Gazzy, and I rocketed up to the fight and rammed the Erasers with all of our strength. That sent them falling for a bit before they spread their wings and flapped back up to us. Then we played the lets-split-the-hairy-wolf-men-among-us-evenly game. Guess who ended up with the extra Eraser? If your guess was me, then you when a prize.

_Brains against bronze, Max. Brains against bronze._

Now hold on one minute. How the HELL was brains supposed to help me against two Erasers that wanted to tear my throat out? If you come up with an answer soon, give me a call.

I heard a sickening crack and the wind whistling around a body as it plummeted towards the ground. Please let that be an Eraser.

I guess it was, since not too long after the yells of pain got too far away, Fang was wrestling my other Erasers while my Eraser occupied himself with trying to claw my eyes out. Lovely, isn't it?

As the furry doofus reached out to grab me, I ducked and swerved behind him, grabbing around where his wing joints attached together. With a great heave, I twisted his wing almost completely upside down and snapped the joint against my knee. I swear, this looked so painful and it sounded so sickening, I almost felt sympathy for the poor thing as he gave a blood-curdling scream as he lost altitude. I said almost, I didn't say I did.

I looked over at Fang as he body slammed the Eraser and kicked the other over to where his original Eraser was. Wait, what? Where'd he get two Erasers from?

I looked over at Iggy to see him doing something. Something with wires. His long delicate fingers danced and weaved through the wires with such grace, it scared me. Then I saw a explosion of microscopic sparks shower his hands. About a second later, after the Erasers began figuring out what was going on, I heard some beeping. I looked over at Gazzy to see him grinning and giving Iggy a thumbs up. I looked back over at Iggy to see that devilish, yet maniacal grin on his face. I only saw that face when…

Uh oh.

Unluckily for the two Erasers, they were still side-by-side. So when Iggy threw the bomb at them, it got both of them in a fiery explosion. One of the Erasers wings were dancing in flames, along with most of his fur. He pawed at his body as he fell. His companion fell through the air, gurgling blood as he stared at the gaping hole in his chest. Unluckily for us, we were near the Erasers, so the shockwave from the bomb got us too. It sent us falling head over feathers as we fell through the sky. We had dropped about thirty feet before we collected our wits and spread our wings to catch our selves.

Strike three, you're out. Victory goes to Max and the Flock while the Erasers go home to lick their wounds.

Boo hoo. So sad. Oh well.

"Damage report!" I yelled out after doing a 360 to make sure everyone was here.

A chorus of "I'm good!" came up, except for reporting a few black eyes and some bleeding scratches on their arms, they looked pretty darn good. Ig probably got the most damage though, you know, fighting five Erasers and being blind while being in mid-air and all.

But, yeah, we shrug stuff like that off.

We hovered in the air for a minute as I struggled to get the map out of Fang's backpack without knocking him down or letting the map fly away. Total gave an impatient snort from Iggy's arms and I shot him _the_ look. He snorted again, but tried to hide it as he snuggled down deeper into Iggy's arms. Do I love the dog a whole lot? Not really. Will I sky dive just to catch him from going squish on the ground? Maybe. Will I wring his little hurry neck out when he pushes me over the edge? You betcha.

After a couple more minutes of _accidentally_ hitting Fang in the head while wrestling with the map, I finally fluttered away from Fang as he glared daggers at me and rubbed his dark haired head. I stuck my tongue out at him and looked down at the map.

"Where shall we go, where shall we go..." I mumbled to myself as I looked at our map. Angel flapped over beside me, careful not to tangle our wings as she looked at the map. Then she pointed up near the northern area of the map.

"Let's go to here! Let's go to Chicago!" She said gleefully. Total yipped in agreement and Nudge squealed. Gazzy covered his ears, as he knew a rant was coming. Poor Iggy, he couldn't cover his ears, holding the dog creates problems like that.

"I've always wanted to go to Chicago! I heard that it's really, really big and it has some tall buildings. Not as tall as some in New York, but they're still really tall! They also have that really big aquarium place, um, the Shedd Aquarium! And that really big museum is there too. I want to ride the trolleys and ride the metro! I also want to go see those shows they play there. I heard they have the Putman Spelling Bee and something called Stomp or something like that. But I want to go see that Wicked one. That one sounds really good. Then we can…"

"Yes, lets go to Chicago." I said cutting Nudge off. "It'll take about eight hours if we pour on the speed, that's including the breaks. So, it's decided. Who wants to go to Chicago?" I said, folding away the map and stuffing it into my pocket. Then, turning northward, we all took off.

Five Hours Later… 

"Hey Max?"

"What is it Total?"

"I gotta go to the bathroom."

"Max, we land, _right now._" Iggy said loudly.

I sighed and we made a dive. Luckily, we seem to be going faster than I thought we would. If we looked really hard, we could see the bright lights of Downtown Chicago shining brightly in the dark. It'd probably take about thirty more minutes and we'd be in the busiest part of Chicago. I could already hear those taxi horns blasting.

We dropped a bit of a ways away from a gas station and I let Total trot off and do his business. Soon we were back in the night sky, soaring and riding those warm thermals. Our wings filled with the warm air as we sailed through the sky.

Not too much later, we dropped onto a roof in Chicago. And might I say, this place was busy. And I mean busy with a capital B-U-S-Y.

We went unnoticed as we left our roof and strolled the streets of Chicago. Taxis were everywhere. I hope we didn't have to cross the road anytime soon, might be the death of us. Suddenly nudge squealed and I looked over at the younger ones who were staring at a building. Gazzy's eyes looked as if they'd pop out of his head and roll over into the store. Same with Angel and Total. I looked up at the store they were all staring at.

Damn.

The Hershey store.

Which meant chocolate.

This was not going to end well. I had to get them away from right here. That is, if I didn't want to deal with three overactive kids and a dog.

"Hey, uh, lets go eat! Come on, that Motto place over there looks pretty nice!" I said and began gathering them up as we all walked over to the restaurant. Fang was the first to reach the door. He pulled it open for us.

"Oh, such a gentleman. You should do this more often." I cooed at him as we walked past. He snorted and followed us in. He made sure to try and step on my foot, but the poor boy's hopes were crushed when he remembered my boots. Oh well.

We continued into the restaurant, took about an hour to get seated, then we got the surprise of our life.

They gave us paper. For appetizers. And they gave us the menu and told us to remember to chew the menu well. Well, I think I just stepped into the loony barn, how about you?

But, truthfully, the paper tasted good. It tasted like food. Good enough for me. And it was actually filling us. I applaud who ever thought of this. Smart guy, or girl, or whoever made this stuff up. I was amazed. Just… Wow. You know how something leaves someone speechless, but they still got something to say? That's how I was.

But yeah, after we inhaled the paper like the shredders we are, we went back out and explored. We spotted a small internet café and went in. We got some coffee, chose some computers, and began our researching. Or at least Nudge and I did. Fang went to go mess with his blog, Iggy, hanging over him while the Angel and Gazzy played computer games with Total watching.

So, Nudge began her super-top-secret breaking skills on the computers for files on the School. We were still looking for info on me. Not that I really cared that my life had a black veil over it while everyone else knew about their families. You know, cause I'm tough like that.

We found some School files. But they seemed to be the same ones we saw a week ago, but we looked through them to see if there was anything we missed. Since, you know, having all the time we want on a computer in a internet café and all.

And get this, we found a whole chunk of info, but it was made around the time that we were in the School, what was in it made me gasp in surprise. I almost couldn't believe what I saw when I read this.

_The oldest and one of the best experiments ever created, Experiment 820452 has made rapid advancements. This is one of the most successful avian mixtures we have ever created. Its life span has actually been slowed, to where it can go through two years and barely look three months older. _

_We have also successfully grafted another DNA and it is adapting to it wonderfully. Experiment 820452 has currently been identified to be at least three years old. We are not sure, with its aging process having been slowed so dramatically. We are planning on building more of these, but we will test it out, wait until the new experiments are older to see how they will adapt to the DNA. _

_Until then, we will move Experiment 820452 to our underground Arkansas chambers where it shall remain for the next twenty years…_

Then it drifted off into the unbreakable code that we never seemed to be able to break. Nudge had already gathered the rest of the Flock to look at our discovery. I turned around to the others and said quietly.

"One like us."

They all nodded. Fang straightened up and looked around. He looked at me.

"I guess we're going to Arkansas?" He said looking at me and I nodded. I asked the employees if we were allowed to print stuff and they said sure, so I hit the print button and printed our newest information.

And being the nice people they were, the employees there gave us an extra cup of free coffee and free cookies.

Still not homemade, but hey, they were cookies.

?'s POV

A young girl sat curled in a corner of the pitch-black room. The only light came from a small, spluttering light bulb that hung in the middle of the vast room. A bed lay in the opposite corner of the room, tidily made. Only one door was in the nightmare-ish room.

The girl looked over at it. She knew what was behind it. It was a maze. She knew the way out of the maze; she had plenty of time to find all of the routes. But she also knew what was at the end of that maze. It was a room full of those lupine-hybirds. She hated going in there though. It wasn't that she was afraid of them. In fact, it was the other way around.

Whenever she entered that room, the lupine-hybirds would stop whatever they were doing and gather in a corner, cowering like scared puppies who had just witnessed a gruesome death of their mothers.

Though sometimes, when she was bored, she went in there and camp out, hands bloodied with the large gray wings she held in her hands. She didn't know why, but ever since they made these new avian-lupine-hybirds, she would rip off their wings after killing them and take them to the dark room she lived in, plucking the feathers off.

She looked over at the pile of feathers beside her dinky little bed. She stretched her own black-feathered wings. Why did she do this? Because she was jealous.

Those avian-lupine-hybirds had beautiful and healthy gray wings with the long delicate feathers. She looked at her wing. It ached with the years of lacking movement. She'd never flown before, and envied the avian-lupine-hybirds. Before she killed them, she made them tell her what flying was like. Even though the avian-lupine-hybirds answered with shaky voices, they seem to relax when they thought of flying.

Then she killed them, snapped off their wings, and took them back to her little hellhole. Then she began de-feathering the wings, slowly putting them in a growing pile after examining each one. Small grins would creep onto her face as she examined her lightweight treasures.

Though then she would grow angry. How could these weak beasts have such beautiful wings filled with these silky gray wings? How could that be while her black wing's feathers were limp and many were missing? Maybe it was as most people say.

White wings are good luck.

Grey wings are mixed luck.

And black wings were bad luck.

To be continued…

_As I said before, sorry for the delay. This really only took me about three days to write, but homework and other stuff is dragging me down. So, there might not be quick updates._

_So please, you people know who you are, please don't email me asking if I can update faster. I'm working as fast as possible while trying not to rush it._

_TTFN_


End file.
